JYI recently sat down with the vivacious Irish evolutionary biologist Dr. Mary O’Connell to talk about her work, her recent expedition to Peru and what traits undergraduates need to succeed in this field.

Obsessive dogs, anxious frogs, and depressed hogs – you name it; the list goes on and on. We’ve all heard of animals, particularly some of our closer canine and feline friends, that suffer from psychiatric illnesses. In fact, animals develop the entire gamut of mental disorders, save for one: schizophrenia. According to current literature, psychosis has yet to reported outside of a human substrate. In contrast, obsession, anxiety, and depression have been described in many non-human species.